I see your project manager tendencies showing.

I'm bringing my gun. It's loaded with unhappy bullets.

It's not posted here, but I got the impression somewhere that y'all would be discussing the issue of couples / families / friends who wish to be slotted together in guild events. If that's the case, then hopefully you'd like to hear from some of the couples first...so here are my thoughts.

Many of our guild couples (and former guild couples) have expressed that they prefer to play together; it's pretty universal. I think that it comes down to the matter that playing together is spending time doing something together, whereas obviously doing separate things is not.

No one should ever be allowed to hold a run hostage or dictate the makeup of a raid, but you're not likely to find that at GWJ, thankfully. What you may occasionally see are people saying "I would love to come if my spouse / child and I can play together, but if not, we're going to spend time together in some other fashion." It may not always be spelled out in that way, but if we assume good hearts amongst our guildmates and friends and give them the benefit of the doubt, hopefully it's easy to see that's the motivation.

In concrete terms, there are two couples signed up for ZA for tonight. It appears that Aes and Vall were willing to run separately, but you'll notice that they rescheduled a date night in order to help us take a shot at that place. There is absolutely nothing selfish or wrong about a married couple wanting to spend their Friday together, I'm sure we'll all agree. Likewise, I would not be very interested in spending my Friday night running without Sigsbee; she's my wife, we almost always do things together on a Friday night, and that's normal in the real world. And that's at the heart of the matter when it comes to couples - we exist in the real world out here. In terms of WoW and raiding, it may not be the norm, but if everyone can step back and think about the way things go down in relationships and real life, it might help.

For instance, picture a scenario where I was invited to go bowling (in a group consisting of both men and women) by a friend, but when I said "I'd love to come if my wife can come too, we were planning on being together that night," the friend accused me of holding the bowling outing hostage. Seems pretty bizarre in real life terms, right?

The entire element of hostage-holding only arises, btw, because we have a shortage of healers and tanks. This is not really anyone's fault, but least of all is it the fault of the healers and tanks. I think everyone knows that those roles are under-repesented in our guild. The only possible solution within the guild is for more people to respec or level another character. By coincidence, one of our tanks (me) and one of our close friends and fellow Goodjers (Aes) play those roles, and happen to be in couples. If we can't field a run (or someone can't get the slot they wanted) because one BHAer and / or one friend of BHA isn't available, then we need to recognize that our problem is a shortage of tanks or healers, and not that married couples shockingly want to do things together.

I don't think most anyone has a problem with this, but over the last month I've heard some voices of understanding, and some who seem to think that the guild can simply assign whoever it wants to whatever raid, end of story. You can do that in a hardcore raiding guild, but this is GWJ, and if I expect any guild to be supportive of couples, this would be the one. I certainly don't expect people to be thought of as selfish for wanting to play with their spouse - in the real world, it's more likely that one is selfish for NOT wanting to spend time with their spouse.

To get this into practical terms, I am not saying that I will only play with my wife; I raided for months before she ever got keyed. That said, if I am sometimes only available as part of the proverbial "package deal", then that's real world virtue, not video game mutiny.

Sorry for writing a book, but if y'all are going to be talking about this issue, then you should really have this input. Happy meeting-ing!

I see 4. and Additional Topic A. as being too closely related to be separate topics.

I suppose so. I guess the key word is scheduling. We're speaking broadly of scheduling issues of which 4 and A are parts of. Perhaps rephrase four to think of it as scheduling issues?

Robert's Rules are in effect I take it?

Every time I see how civilians run meetings, my brain hurts.

I think Luna's meeting rules are perfect. I would recommend adopting them for all of our meetings.

But I'm not diggin' on the dancing pink polka dotted elephant hate.

Agenda for discussion at your meeting concerning the guild bank.

1. My Auction House alt joined the guild and was immediately denied access to the bank for two weeks. Hmmm.

2. Maybe it's me, but guildies don't need to feel guilty for wanting something out of the bank. The CFO making judgements as to a request is understandable but it can cause problems. I have heard several say they would rather get the stuff they need on their own than come to the bank.

3. Seems to me that if someone is a willing to be a committed contributor to the bank then they should not be limited to two "stacks of fish or something" ... maybe they should have access to anything they might want out of the bank. If abuse happens, talk to them. If it happens again, cut off their bank access totally or remover them from the guild.

4. I know the guild bank is a new deal and everyone is working to make sure it serves the guild. Thanks for your efforts.

Since these rules were laid down when I was guild leader, let me address this concern.

I have heard these thoughts from several people. Let me toss this out for everyone to hear. When the officers decided on who gets access to what we knew that there was no way to make everyone happy. We also know that there are some who only take, some who only give and some who do a bit of both. The bank has ALWAYS been about spreading the wealth. And though you folks may not realize it, I never gave anyone all of a stack of something. The difference now is that folks can see how many of something is in the bank. When I was spamming all the contents, folks only knew that we had it. As a group, the officers felt that several things needed to be accomplished with the bank.
The ranks in the guild need to have meaning, thus the Fairy Princess gets no access to the bank. And as we all know, everyone NO MATTER who they are does 2 weeks as a Fairy Princess.
As for folks having access to anything they want, you all have that. To limit any drama or issues the officers as a group decided that the CFO had final say and that we were not giving all of any item to one person.
To those who do not like these rules, we are sorry. They were made to be as fair as possible to everyone. I know that someone wanted all of the fel iron we had and I said no, they could have 1/3 or maybe 1/2. How is that persons need more important than the someone else who asks for it an hour later or tomorrow? There is no good or fair way to resolve this issue. This maybe a time when we as a guild will have to agree to disagree. If someone feels that all they do is give and do not get enough in return, may I suggest that you stop giving or don't give as much. The bank is not about I gave this thus I get that.

Troll noted my thought already, and I wanted to second support for this particular comment from Kiri. Many goodjers who've been community members at this site for years, including myself, have all put in our time as Fairy Princesses. It's silly, fun for community-building, and a reasonable precaution all wrapped up in one.

...why is everyone looking at me like that?

Most meetings that are happening down the road like for ideas to be put on the agenda to be submitted early. That is all I was doing. I, for one, just simply wanted to offer items that I thought worthy of your discussion. I was not looking for any explanation, justification or communication about these thoughts. I had things I wanted to communicate and instead of sending them to Reap via PM I posted them on this thread. I NEVER expected a response here. Sorry

Don't be sorry Epe, quite the contrary, I see your post as a success. You had a concern about a guild process, and made your concern known. IMHO, this is the only way we can identify unneccessary/outdated practices, and improve ourselves.

Good job!

Thanks Fedaykin98 and Troll ...